


Of souls and secrets

by wefewwehappyfew



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Gen, My attempt of sorts at an origins story, Small mentions of Donna and Laura, even if they are slightly messed up, familial relationships because those are the best, tw for violence and suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-27
Updated: 2017-04-27
Packaged: 2018-10-24 16:32:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10745538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wefewwehappyfew/pseuds/wefewwehappyfew
Summary: There are many reasons  why Harold Smith never leaves his house.





	Of souls and secrets

His older sister had the loveliest dark hair.

It framed her face in a beautiful manner, like that of those portraits of women of old with their long, romantic locks; and Harold loved to play with it when he was a child.

In a way, she was like _a doll_ , their grandmother used to say. Beautiful and delicate, with soft features, the palest skin and a strange need to please everybody.

But Harold likes to think that his sister only had been herself when they were alone. Writing or reading stories. He mostly wrote, and she read, impersonating the many characters that filled his stories.

(She had always wanted to be an actress, but alas, that was not something a proper lady should do as a job, according to their parents)

Most of the time, she seemed happy. And that made Harold happy too.

\-------

" _J'ai une âme solitaire"_ she told him once.

He remembers being invaded with a terrible sadness at her words, and leaving his seat to embrace her so close he could feel her heart beating.

He wonders if it is because he did not want his precious sister to break. To remind him that she was also _human_.

(Then again, he was the only person until that moment to whom she could do that.)

\-------

Harold still keeps the letters. Even if they were not for him.

Her calligraphy was delicate too, as if it were not that of a young woman in the 1970s, but of a 19th century lady. They others though, they become more and more unintelligible as one makes their way through them.

He remembers the man those letters belonged to. Though the first time Harold met him he gave him a completely different impression. The man was tall, handsome, with dirty blonde hair and the clearest blue eyes.

_(His sister even joked that she was sure she had a type, as her two **favourite** men had eyes as clear as day.)_

The man even seemed quite princely, with his military uniform and way of carrying himself. But also nice. Too nice perhaps.

Harold himself could not help a pang of jealousy. It was as if the world of his sister had started to move on and, no matter how much she insisted he would still be a part of it.

He never was.

Nowadays, Harold feels afraid to even touch those letters.

After all, they remind him why he never goes outside.

\-------

His sister started collecting flowers after the man sent her a dried orchid with one of his letters from Vietnam.

None of them could compete with the beauty of the orchid, she had said, and had proclaimed it to be her favourite flower.

Harold wonders what she would think of his garden.

He likes to think she would have loved it.

"Some of them make me think of you" he says to himself one day.

And he closes her eyes, and sees her. Beautiful, untarnished by time, her long dark hair tumbling over her shoulders. A smile draws on her red lips and reaches to her dark eyes, and she opens her arms.

" _I've missed you, little brother_."

Even if it hurts when he opens them again and she is not there, here it is better than outside.

(Outside there's only **red**.)

\-------

Harold likes to think that his sister would have liked Laura and Donna, even if each in a different way.

Laura she would have protected, like she protected him from the monsters, from the sounds that were not voices in his head, but came from a darker place. His sister would have had the bravery to protect them both.

But Donna... Donna and his sister could have perfectly been the best of friends. _Deux âmes solitaires_. Two beautiful, kind women who made this sad world a little brighter.

(Maybe one day, he'll tell Donna about his sister. But she has to tell him her story first.)

\-------

He moved with his sister and the man when he was accepted into college. Literature.

After all, his father insisted that if he wanted to become an author the only good way was to study the classics. Plus their house was close to college.

Everything was different.

The man was different, far from his princely manners. He had become gaunt, and unkempt, and Harold himself couldn't remember a time when he left the house.

"They won't find me _here_." He once told him.

"Who?"

And there was only silence.

(Sometimes Harold wonders if the man saw the same things he heard. Because he looked at him like he _knew_.)

His sister was different too. Her changes were subtler, but were there. She was still kind. But her eyes cried out about unspeakable things that had happened, and when Harold tried to reach to her, she would shut down.

The only place where she seemed back to her happy self was in the garden she had started. There were no orchids in it.

"It is something private for me, little brother." She had told him once "Like a secret. And you never show your secrets for the rest of the world to know. You keep them like treasures."

And then she would cup his cheek, and kiss his brow, as she used to do when they were children and she needed him to calm down.

But this time, it didn't work.

\-------

Harold doesn't even know how he ended up in Twin Peaks.

He remembers the man talking about it in the first time they met. But only in passing. Perhaps he was from here? Harold doesn't know, and if he cared to know, his questions would be difficult to solve in this moment.

He doesn't even know half the town. It's probably changed quite a lot since he arrived here. Or not, who knows.

In the meanwhile, he lives through the stories Donna tells him. And he still hopes she'll be able to see what he means. Laura's diary is useless. It will not help them find the one who murdered her. He's read it over and over to find clues to no avail.

There's **never** a clue. There's **never** justice.

\-------

That night, when he returned from class, the house was deadly silent.

Not even the television was on, which was slightly worrying.

(It was _**always** _ on. Even in the dead of night when the only thing on was the test card. Harold himself had actually started to find it strangely reassuring.)

Making his way towards the garden, Harold found them both outside. They seemed calm at first glance, but then he realised something.

The man was holding a gun to her cheek. And even if Harold screamed, if he tried to force the door and open it so he could stop the man, the sound of a bang deafened him.

And she fell to the ground.

And everything was red.

The man stood still, the blood of Harold's sister staining his face and his hands.

He was eerily calm.

"They wanted to contaminate us. But they won't get her. They won't get me" He said

"Who?"

"We won't be unclean." The man placed the gun inside his mouth and pulled the trigger.

Harold did nothing to stop him.

\-------

" _J'ai une âme solitaire._ "

Those are the last words he writes. The last words he'll ever pronounce.

~~This world has proven itself over and over to not be worth living in.~~

~~Donna was not any better than the rest. She **betrayed** his trust.~~

~~Laura was **deep** into an evil which he could not get her out of.~~

~~His sister did not fight to **survive**.~~

~~_**Why** should_ **he**?~~

 

**Author's Note:**

> \- Ok, so Harold Smith intrigues me. Muchly. How the heck did he end up there? What was his life previous to Twin Peaks? If things could have been carried out properly in Season, would we have seen more of him? (I personally would have loved if we did buuuut yanno, tis Lynch, maybe or maybe not)  
> \- So thus this drabble happened. Kind of.  
> \- Since the only two relationships we see Harold having are with women (Laura and Donna) it sort of came naturally that his "origins story" would be related to a woman. At first I thought about a mother, but the unnamed sister appeared full force and it all made much more sense (sort of). The semi-obsessive love/idolization, the idea of sibling friendship and the world of the sister moving without Harold (he always ends up alone), and the mirroring ends.  
> \- And of course, death. Because as Twin Peaks shows us, it is not the worst of fates... Or is it?


End file.
